Despite the progress that human rights advocates are making worldwide, stigma seems to pervade as a nebulous stumbling block.

The bulk of the series focuses on abortion, but there are also pieces on sex work, queerness, sluttiness, and more. An overwhelming number of submissions on a range of topics poured in from around the world. I was, and remain, immensely moved by the courage of individuals to tell their stories and examine taboo subjects. Stigma survives, in large part, on silence, and this is a collective effort to undo that.

Atlanta, GA

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director in charge of Editorial at Feministing. Maya has previously worked at NARAL Pro-Choice New York and the National Institute for Reproductive Health and was a fellow at Mother Jones magazine. She graduated with a B.A. from Carleton College in 2008. A Minnesota native, she currently lives, writes, edits, and bakes bread in Atlanta, Georgia.

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Editorial.

Lambda Literary Award-winning writer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Bodymap, published this summer by Mawenzi House, returns often to the word “home.” Home is a meeting of body and map,
tattooed on Piepzna-Samarasinha’s breastplate and charted throughout the work in sensory memories, corporeal trauma, physical pleasures. “You’re going to find the people you can sketch the secret inside the world with. If you can’t find them you can sketch the secret inside of your world inside yourself,” she writes. She sometimes sketches ‘the secret inside of world’ with lovers, and we’re lucky enough to get to listen to the lyric she finds: “Just dissolve into the deliciousness of lying down with someone else who knew what it was like to always lie down.”

The co-founder ...

Lambda Literary Award-winning writer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s Bodymap, published this summer by Mawenzi House, returns often to the word “home.” Home is a meeting of body and map,
tattooed on Piepzna-Samarasinha’s breastplate and charted throughout the work in ...

The latest undercover “sting” video seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood is here. In this selectively edited video, a group called the Center for Medical Progress charges that the reproductive health clinics are “selling” fetal tissue and organs.

The person behind the Center for Medical Progress, a group of self-described “citizen journalists” monitoring medical ethics which didn’t seem to be doing much until it launched its “investigation” into Planned Parenthood, is the former research director for Live Action, the anti-choice group that put out similarly misleading videos targeting the organization over sex-selective abortions and sex-trafficking.

The latest undercover “sting” video seeking to discredit Planned Parenthood is here. In this selectively edited video, a group called the Center for Medical Progress charges that the reproductive health clinics are “selling” fetal tissue and organs.

The myth that abortion causes mental health problems should have been long sinceput to restat this point. But in case you needed yet more evidence that those anti-choice signs insisting that “women DO regret abortion” are full of it, here’s some.

According to a new study that tracked hundreds of women who had abortions, more than 95 percent of participants reported that ending a pregnancy was the right decision for them. Feelings of relief outweighed any negative emotions, even three years after the procedure.

Researchers examined both women who had first-trimester abortions and women who had procedures after that point (which are often characterized as “late-term abortions”). When it came to ...

The myth that abortion causes mental health problems should have been long sinceput to restat this point. But in case you needed yet more evidence that those anti-choice signs insisting ...